Warfield expert Fred Zaspel sets the record straight on Annie Pearce Kinkead’s well-known illness. He argues that her condition was not as bad as is often recounted, at least not intially.
The long and short of all this is that Annie was somehow affected by a thunderstorm in Germany in 1876 or 77, and that this had a debilitating effect on her until in the mid 1890s she became increasingly “invalid” and homebound. Tragic as this is (and I certainly don’t mean to minimize it), it has been overstated in many more recent accounts. Annie was not paralyzed, we don’t know that she was struck by lightning, and she was not absolutely invalid until perhaps in her very final years. But the thunderstorm event was traumatic, and evidently it did have gradually debilitating effects. And Warfield was obviously concerned to be close and provide well for her. Please note that my intention here is not to relegate the entire story to mythology, only to check the over-statements.